


even after the beyond

by pretentiousasshole



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-07-27 09:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16215836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pretentiousasshole/pseuds/pretentiousasshole
Summary: Shianni does her best to continue.





	1. Chapter 1

Of course it would be Nell that slays the Archdemon. Always saving the world, always taking all the burden. Shianni curses the Maker, that He would allow this to happen. It’s always the elves who have to sacrifice themselves, self immolate so that the world can keep turning. 

The Queen invites Cyrion, Soris and her to the castle for the funeral. The shems won’t even let them bury one of their own. When they arrive, the guards salute them as if only a year ago they would have thrown them out for trespassing. During the service, Cyrion keeps his head down beside her. She clasps his hand when they burn the funeral pyre, now Nell can never rest amongst her people, her ashes are scattered to the wind like an ancient shemlen warrior. 

The Queen makes Shianni Teyrna of the Alienage and builds them a stunning manor in the middle of the Alienage. Shianni hates it, it is an orgy of gaudiness and wealth and she knows Nell would have hated it as well. It is spacious and tall, with Orlesian windows and marble floors. It looks terribly out of place in the burnt-out Alienage. At least it is large enough to house the elders and the orphaned children on the streets. 

It is a year after Nell’s death that they receive her things. Shianni is woken up by a panicked Soris who squawks that there is a beast outside the manor. When she goes outside, she sees no beast but a large, grey man standing near the vhenadahl tree. In his arms are a set of crisply wrapped packages. When she closes the door to the manor, he looks up at her. 

“Are you Shianni, kin to Nell Tabris?” She nods and the man clasps the packages a bit tighter. “These are for you.”

“How did you get these?” The man’s face is stoic but she swears there’s a flash of pain behind his eyes when she asks the question.

“I fought with her throughout her journeys in Denerim. I am Sten of the Beresaad.” 

“Oh. The Qunari?” The man nods. He places the packages gently in her hands. 

“These are all of her possessions. I apologize that it has taken so long to collect them all.” He pauses for a moment. “And that there is so little to return.”

The packages are light and wrapped in dark brown paper, tied neatly with string. She tries her best not to think about how Nell came from nothing, grew up with nothing and then died with nothing in return, even though she had saved Ferelden, but she cannot. Even a year after she died, the wound is still fresh on Shianni’s soul. 

But she doesn’t want to cry in front of Sten. She doesn’t want to cry in front of anybody anymore. “Thank you, Sten.”

“I should be leaving,” Sten says, beginning to turn away.

“Wait! I’d be a terrible Ternya if I didn’t at least have you over for tea.” She grins to herself, thinking of the pompous title. “At least stay for tea.”

“I really should be going…”

“Nell mentioned once to me that you liked cookies, is that right?” She sees Sten’s lips twitch slightly. “My uncle makes the best molasses biscuits in the entire alienage. We can have some if you stay.”

Sten mulls it over for a moment before nodding quickly and then following her inside the manor. It is still early in the morning and most of the house is asleep. She leads him to the kitchen where she offers him a seat and then gets the kettle ready and puts the cookies on a small plate. 

“The manor is… impressive,” Sten says finally and she laughs.

“Nell would have hated it. A present from the Queen, as if we’re supposed to be grateful,” her voice is bitter but Sten says nothing. “They always did take us for granted.”

“Have conditions improved much since Anora has taken power?” 

She shakes her head. “The Alienage is still an Alienage, isn’t it? The walls are still up and we’re closed off from the rest of Denerim.”

“Anora was eager for power. It is not surprising that she has not fulfilled any of her promises.” The kettle screeches and she takes it off the stove. She pours the water into one of the fancy teapots they had gifted them when they built the Manor. She puts the tea into a strainer and then allows it to sit in the water. She sits down beside Sten.

“I know,” she sighs. “I guess we’re pretty stupid, aren’t we, for trusting a shem?”

“Under the Qun, this would not happen. Everyone knows their place; there is no exclusion. Even the Arishok must keep his word.” 

“I’ve always been told that the Qun is evil but this whole ‘no exclusion’ thing sounds pretty good to me,” she mulls over her tea. 

“Do not let your Chantry hear you say that. They would be most displeased.”

“My cousin didn’t tell me you had a sense of humor, Sten,” she giggles and Sten cocks an eyebrow. “You must have had lots of fun together on the road.”

“There was never a dull moment,” he says. 

Sten crunches on a cookie. Shianni wishes Nell could see this, the lurking guardian sitting down for tea with her, a mousy thing who barely reached his chest. She wonders what her cousin would say, if she would just sit quietly or come up with a clever quip. 

It is Sten who speaks from silence.

“Have any of her other companions visited you?”

Shianni shakes her head. “No, but I didn’t expect anyone anyways. You all seem like busy folk.”

She sees Sten’s mouth twist slightly, as if he is displeased with her expectation of Nell’s merry band of misfits or maybe if he is displeased that he’s the only one who came to visit. “I would have thought that Threnin would have given you his regards. For someone who is so obsessed with the ‘honor’ of the Wardens, it is strange.” 

“He has better things to do,” she says. Sten looks unconvinced but says nothing more.

After a while of more silence and a few more cookies, Sten stands to leave. They walk back outside and before turning to go, Sten bows to her. She’s almost too stunned to react; no one has ever treated her with such deference before and it makes her throat choke up. She wishes Nell was here.

“You are Basalit-an, worthy of respect,” Sten says. There is an intensity in his eyes that she cannot place. She shivers. “Panahedan, Shianni.”

He walks off before she can say goodbye. 

Basalit-an. Worthy of respect.

She wonders if that will ever be enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I checked the wiki and apparently Valora gets taken as a slave but I have chosen to discard that because fuck you dragon age

She tucks the package away in her room. She isn’t sure she can bear to look at it yet. 

In the meanwhile, the meeting gives her newfound energy and she takes to rebuilding the Alienage with a vigor she hasn’t felt in years. 

She organizes clean-ups, to deal with the destruction still plaguing the streets from the battle. She takes to organizing the food banks, so that there is enough for everyone to eat. She calls a meeting with all the residents of the Alienage, from the youngest to the oldest and the sickest with the goal of drafting a list of demands they will present to the new Arl of Denerim. 

At first, there is hesitancy. Even the youngest among them can still remember the brutal violence of the Arl and his lackeys. In those times, demanding rights and freedoms was out of the question. Anyone who had ever sought to change things with the shems was laughed at. 

Now, no one is laughing. The wound is still fresh and Shianni can see the scars of oppression on her people.

But there is change in the air.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Valora asks as she hands another undershirt on the line. They are doing laundry on a cool autumn afternoon and her children scurry around them, playing Hero of Ferelden, a popular game these days.

Shianni took to Valora immediately after Nell left. Even though upon their first meeting Shianni thought her to be boring and dry, it only took hours after the incident for Shianni to see that she’d been all wrong. She realized that Valora is as headstrong as herself, even if they have different ways of expressing it. Despite her meek demeanor, she takes no bullshit and keeps her head high even if the rest of the world wants to force it down. Valora’s not a replacement for Nell, she knows, even if it took her awhile to realize it. 

“Do what?” She asks and Valora bats at her with a damp sock.

“Don’t play coy with me! You know what I’m talking about. Are you sure you want to host this meeting?”

“Why wouldn’t I? The only times we gather together are during weddings or funerals and even then everyone gets raging drunk. We can’t fix community issues if we’re too plastered to have a discussion.” 

Valora huffs. “Not everybody is as cutting edge as you are.”

“It’s not about being ‘cutting edge’. It’s about justice,” she protests. “If I have to ruffle some feathers, then so be it. What’re you so caught up about?”

Valora’s hands still and Shianni sees as she nervously tugs at the shirt she is about to hang. “Shianni… If you do this, if you actually demand for changes… Well, some folks think that this is the best way only because it’s the way it’s always been. If you stand up for what’s right Maker knows what they could do.”

Shianni knows. She knows since the moment she became Bann that Isolde only wants a puppet. The shems view them like children, only to be sated with the next dangly gold piece that they hang in front of them and satisfied with the scraps they throw on to the floor. Even for the smallest changes, she has received threats of death and rape from not only shems but elves used to easy violence rather than difficult and just peace.

But while the walls are still up, Shianni knows she has a job to do. She won’t let Nell’s sacrifice be in vain.

She musters her most reassuring smile. “I know, Val. It’ll be okay.”  
\--  
It is, strangely enough, Soris who begins the list of grievances at the meeting. His voice is wavery and quiet at times but he does not finish speaking until everything is laid out, fresh and raw. 

“We deserve respect. We deserve rights. We deserve our own guard since the shems don’t help us. We deserve not to be harassed on the street. We deserve to own property outside the Alienage. We keep on giving and giving!” His voice raises to a crescendo of anger and Shianni knows that he feels the stares of the crowd like daggers. “So what if the Hero of Ferelden sacrificed herself to save us, what good came out of it if we’re still living the same as before?”

A wave of murmuring washes over the assembled crowd. Soris’ cheeks are bright red from the attention and he sits down, folding his arms over his chest. Pride balloons in her chest along with a deep ache. If only Nell was here to see him like this, standing tall despite his anxiety. 

“Thank you, Soris,” she says standing at the front of the extravagant dining room that has been repurposed for meetings and other administrative work. Almost the entire Alienage is clustered in this room; the elders propped up on chairs and covered in shawls and blankets, children bobbing upon their mothers’ laps and the younger folk sitting on the floor or leaning against the walls. Never in her most wild dreams would she have thought that they could get all these people into a room. Yet here they are. Not a day goes by where her people defy her expectations of them. “If we want to bring our concerns to Isolde, we must be specific. You all know how the shems love their lists.”

The crowd chuckles quietly. Slowly, one by one, different grievances are aired and Shianni writes them down in her notebook. A stop to the dumping of sewage in their wells, a guard under their own control, destruction of the walls, the ability to own land outside the Alienage, an end to the curfews… the list goes on and on. Shianni is almost out of paper by the time the meeting concludes.

It devolves into a messy party by the time they finish all of their work and for the first time in ages Shianni feels the stress lifting off her chest. There is dancing and food and wine and the musicians set up their fiddles and drums and they all have a grand time. 

Perhaps changing things for the better isn’t so impossible after all.


End file.
